It must be nice to have friends like Al Melvin in the state legislature. You never know when the fiscally conservative senator might throw $30 million your way.
A Utah-based company, Imagine Learning, could be the recipient of Melvin’s largesse if the bill he’s sponsoring, SB1239, becomes law. It allocates $30 million for one company to provide a computer-based reading program for young children across the state who are reading far below grade level.
What a coup for the lucky company that wins the contract! All that money without having to go school to school and district to district attempting to sell your wares to cash-strapped administrators. It’s like winning the lottery.
You’d expect some fierce competition from qualified companies vying for a payday that big. But Melvin tailored the bill’s 20-plus specific criteria so only one company qualifies: Imagine Learning.
Melvin has been a fan of Imagine Learning for quite some time. On the 2012 campaign trail, he sang the company’s praises whenever education came up. And back in 2010, he and current education Superintendent John Huppenthal sponsored a similar bill (SB1319) that would have given Imagine Learning $12 million for teaching reading to ELL students. It didn’t pass, so Melvin is adding $18 million to the pot and trying again.
The question is, why does Melvin want to hand Imagine Learning such a lucrative contract? The answer: the company’s impeccable conservative credentials.
Imagine Learning is one of many companies that fund ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, joining the likes of Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and the infamous Koch Brothers. The organization’s main function is to bring corporations and conservative legislators together. Most Arizona Republican legislators including Melvin are current or recent members. At yearly ALEC conferences, corporations get a chance to pitch their services and products to people who hold the state purse strings. They also disseminate fill-in-the-blanks Model Legislation lawmakers can take home. (Melvin’s bill isn’t a piece of Model Legislation so far as I can tell.)
Because of recent bad publicity, a number of corporations have severed ties with ALEC, but not Imagine Learning. It was part of the host committee for the 2012 Annual Conference held in Salt Lake City and sits on ALEC’s Education Task Force. If that wasn’t enough to put the company in Melvin’s political sweet spot, it recently received an award from Parents for Choice in Education, a player in the conservative “education reform” movement which, like Melvin, pushes charter schools and vouchers over traditional public schools.
To be fair, I have to say Imagine Learning’s reading program looks like a decent quality product, though you can’t tell how good it is from the poorly designed studies on the company website; no self-respecting researcher would take them seriously. But regardless of quality, it’s absurd for Al Melvin, sitting in his lofty legislative perch, to dictate how schools teach reading to struggling students. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions in education, and certainly none that will fit the needs of every child who has difficulty reading. Some struggling readers are ELL students who don’t know enough English to speak the language fluently, let alone read it well. Others are English speakers who didn’t go to preschool. Others are children with brain-related learning disabilities. Will the Imagine Learning program be right for all of them? I doubt it. Rather than putting $30 million behind one reading program, it makes far more sense to allow each school to look at its student population and decide what approach or variety of approaches, to spend the money on.
SB1239 is a hypocritical piece of special interest legislation, especially coming from Senator Melvin. This is a man who helped Arizona cut more from its education funding over the past four years—21 percent—than any other state in the nation, yet he wants to take money our children sorely need for their educations and spend it on a reading program the schools haven’t asked for. Our cash-starved schools need that $30 million far more than some Utah company that happens to support Melvin’s conservative education agenda.
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2013.
Thanks for exposing yet another example of what one powerful Legislator can do, or at least try. Hope your piece puts it in the dead bill box!
Excellent summary — thanks for bringing this to our attention!
I’m still unclear why the people who elected Senator Melvin aren’t holding him accountable for items like this fiscally irresponsible bill. No-bid contracts don’t serve taxpayers well, and this is clearly a piece of legislation that was written to steer tax dollars to a single, private company. The $30 million in tax dollars will be beneficial to Senator Melvin’s special relationship with Imagine’s lobbyist…but not much else.
John Huppenthal is a state school superintendent who never spent a day in public school, attending parochial school for his entire primary and secondary school experience. He replaced Tom Horne, who takes his alleged mistress with him from political post to post and hires her to fill positions for which she is singularly unqualified. This is the sorry state of Arizona’s executive branch. And as for Al Melvin and most of the AZ the state legislature, well, the Arizona Nut House located near the Picacho rates as a poor second.
It is an interesting opinion piece full of “could” and “may.” The issues really come down to: 1) is Melvin that smart? 2) is the product that could potentially be used bad? 3) will the children benefit? The first two answers are and obvious no and the third is yes. This does apear to be another biased piece attempting to make one party or person look bad. If there is indeed a criminal issue here, take it to the proper place.
This is just part of the right wing, corporatization agenda. Stick a kid in front of a computer and do away with those pesky public school teachers.
And Mike, thanks for pointing out how ill-qualified Mr. Huppenthal is to head a department meant to support public schools.
Another strike against teachers and public schools who have little autonomy to make decisions about education while the legislators, who anoint themselves as “education experts” promote panaceas that are not scientifically researched or based– all in the name of improving education. Imagine Learning gets to win the lottery and the kids in AZ get watered down learning while poverty programs, nutrition and early childhood get the axe and 11 more schools in Tucson close their doors.
This is the 21st century model of education in a nutshell.
I expect bias when reading this rag, not a problem. I do have a problem with no-bid contracts being awarded. You liberals have really screwed up TUSD, the city of Tucson and Pima County. We have one of the highest sales taxes in the U.S., the highest property taxes in Arizona, the street car will end up costing at least $200 million, $250 million thrown away on Rio Nuevo and nothing to show for it and no body in jail. I could go on and on but I am really wasting my time commenting.
It’s impossible to comment on the reading program without seeing it. Has Mr. Melvin reviewed it in its entirety? Did he seek a review and comment from established educators in the State? One has to wonder about the “one package deal fits all” concept. Being a former educator, I know it may sound good but rarely works for all student demographics. We do live in a diverse state Mr. Melvin. Are there comparable programs on the market? Has the state asked for competitive bids, with input from educators? Is the current language arts curriculum even broken? Does Arizona need to abandon our current language arts curriculum in favor of the $30 million deal? I can’t imagine this going anywhere legislatively.
First there was the Language Experience Approach. Then there were SRA kits, Whole Language Approach, Jostens Learning Systems, computer based reading instruction, Success for All scripted reading, Directed Reading Instruction, Dibbles; No Child Left Behind, etc., etc. All of them worked for some children, some for more, some for less. When will we learn there is NO one size fits all, cookie-cutter approach to teaching literacy? Kids will learn to read when taught effectively by a teacher who knows what she/he is doing and who loves to read. Some will learn quickly and some will take some years to do it. Parents and home environments that encourage reading make a difference. Turning off TV will make a difference. But NO one thing will do it for everyone. Spend the money to buy good books and to pay teachers a living wage so the best will stay in teaching.
The real question is whether someone is throwing money Al’s way. Most of his nuttier legislation seems to be written to throw money towards someone in particular. Makes me wonder…